


Perhaps

by PinkPunk010



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Betrayal, Hope, Love, Pain, some older sibling bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 08:24:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16783273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkPunk010/pseuds/PinkPunk010
Summary: Tina is struggling, Theseus offers some advice, one older sibling to another.





	Perhaps

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like Tina and Theseus don't really interact and I aslo feel Theseus probably gives some rather heartfelt advice.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that a person can’t trust anyone in this world, especially not the ones they love. Perhaps the moral is that it’s easier to keep the world at arms length, to form allies not family. Perhaps the pain isn’t worth it. It’s inevitable that the people who you love the most, the people you would move the Earth and the skies if it would keep them happy and safe – that person you’ve loved with your soul will betray you. 

It isn’t worth it.

Perhaps. 

……………………………………………..

Even Theseus noticed how quiet Tina had been that morning, more snappish and withdrawn. Her shoulders were tense, her brow was furrowed and her lips were so thin they had practically disappeared. Newt didn’t know what to do to help. It was clear that Tina was engaged in a furious internal battle, but it was also clear that the last person she wanted to see was Newt. She’d snapped at him so hard that both of them flinched. Newt had retreated out of the way, visibly upset that he couldn’t help her as he so clearly wanted to. 

Tina retreated to the roof. 

Jacob, Theseus and Bunty sat in awkward silence for several minutes, before Bunty offered to follow Tina, see if a woman’s perspective helped. But she didn’t look convinced, even as she said it. Jacob opened his mouth, but closed it again quickly. If it was her sister she was struggling with, she wouldn’t want to talk to him either. Usually, Tina would let Jacob mother her, would half-heartedly attempt to eat the food he’d prepared, she would talk to Bunty about anything that happened to cross the other witch’s mind. Usually, if she was sad, she went downstairs, not up. 

Theseus stood up, feeling older since the graveyard, a battered he wasn’t sure he’d ever quite recovered from. “I’ll go,” he said firmly, pretending not to notice the matching look of relief on Bunty and Jacob’s faces. “She won’t feel bad about hexing me.”

It was the truth, Tina had been more standoffish with him from the start, and Theseus wondered just what his younger brother had told her. She was perfectly cordial, friendly even, and an unobservant viewer may not notice the stiffness to her words, or how her shoulders relaxed a fraction when talking to Jacob or Bunty. A fool couldn’t miss the softening of Miss Tina Goldstein’s eyes and face when around Newt, a sort of perpetual amused irritation. But she only ever looked like that when Newt couldn’t see, even as he wore his heart on his sleeve. 

They were hopeless, the pair of them. 

Theseus rapped smartly on the roof Newt had added to his flat as a free space for his guests, more guests than he or his house were used to accommodating. His gift for the undetectable extension charm had turned his one floor into a space with room enough for everyone, and a direct route to the top of the house.

Tina was standing facing London, her arms wrapped around her body like she was trying to hold herself together. Theseus understood that feeling in a way Jacob couldn’t, even loving Queenie as he did. When your younger brother didn’t even flinch before throwing himself into untold danger, you learn to live expecting the worst. 

“What?” She snapped across the roof, her voice heavy with emotion she had been trying to keep under wraps for too long now. 

“Just wondered if you would share some roof space, that’s all,” Theseus replied in a forced measured tone. He knew Tina understood when her chin jerked and she looked away. “Thanks. Don’t mind me.”

He let himself think about Leta, of that hot coil in his chest when he’d though she was betraying them, betraying him. And then he thought of the way she’d looked at him, even as her body was disintegrating and he wondered if the pain was ever going to end. 

“How do we do it?” Tina asked, voice broken, buckled in on herself. 

“Do what?” Theseus asked, his voice gravelly. He touched his cheek and wondered when he’d started crying again. He was always crying these days. He didn’t imagine it would stop any time soon. 

“Carry on,” Tina replied, the very answer he’d been expecting and dreading. 

“I don’t know,” He said honestly, “I haven’t a buggering clue.”

Tina choked on a laugh. They both kept looking forward, this was a confidence for sideways conversations and they were both too proud to let the other see them cry. 

“Is it worth it?” Tina, voice raw, asked another question, turning her face into the autumn breeze. 

“Losing them?” Theseus checked, because it was never ok losing someone, and she knew that. 

“Loving them, when you know you’re just going to lose them in the end anyway,” And her voice was bitter in a way Theseus hadn’t heard from her before. She spoke as if being hurt was inevitable. She spoke as if life was a deck of cards stacked against her. 

“But you might not lose them,” Theseus countered quietly, thinking of his brother who hadn’t spoken since Tina had snapped, not wanting to do anything that might upset her further. He thought of the light he’d never once seen in his brother before. “Would you deny yourself a chance of happiness on the odds that…” he faltered, not sure how to phrase it. One of them dies prematurely? 

“Betrays you to join a psychopath?” Tina answered sharply, “Dies, leaves whatever you wanna call it Mister Scamander Senior, it always hurts.”

Theseus considered how he felt as if he’d been broken and put back together with hot glue by someone with only a rudimentary idea of what a human being was supposed to look like, and he half agreed. 

“We can’t keep the world away, deny ourselves real meaningful connection, just on the offchance that it will end in pain,” He said slowly, eyes trained on a light in the street below. “Because what would be the point of any of it?”

Tina remained silent, her shoulders convulsing as Theseus pretended not to notice. 

“My fiancée died,” His voice cracked, “We were to be married on June 6th and I was forcing my brother to be my best man. And I don’t know how I’m supposed to go back to our flat, let alone back to my life without her.”

“Would you change it, if you knew what the ending would be?” 

“No,” He answered immediately, “I’ll take a lifetime of pain for the time we had. I can remember how she took her tea and how she thought Mrs Fudge is a nosy flitterbloom, how she smiled, how her eyes crinkled when she read. I can remember these things and I loved her. I loved her and that alone makes it worth all the pain. And before you ask, I’d always choose to have loved than to have been safe. I love my brother, and I’d rather he know that I love him and he be slightly irritated by that, than for anything to happen to him, and for me to wonder if he ever knew.”

Tina’s breath hitched. 

“And,” he continued, on a roll now, “We need people we trust, and people we love, otherwise how will we know?”

“Know what?” She asked hesitantly. 

“If it was worth it,” Theseus finished, “Miss Goldstein, don’t let your sister’s betrayal stop you from living, and loving. It’s painful, when people leave or they let you down, and I can’t say that’s not going to happen in the future because who bloody knows. But don’t have regrets. Please, don’t have regrets.”

He nodded to himself, patted Tina awkwardly on the shoulder and made to leave. 

“Theseus,” Tina turned her face towards him, he paused. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, Tina,” He nodded to her, “My wand is yours if you ever need it.”

In the auror office, it was an oath not taken lightly. 

“And my wand is yours,” She said firmly, before turning back to the night sky. 

Family was made up of more than blood. Sometimes it was two brothers, a muggle baker, a disheartened young woman, and their friendly chatterbox. 

An hour later, Tina descended back into the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to watch Jacob trying to teach Bunty how to cook pasta. Jacob noticed her first, asking if she was feeling a bit better, and looking surprised by her hug. She hugged Bunty next, and the redhead seemed to expect it, whispering things into Tina’s ear that seemed to make them both feel better. Theseus had been a little surprised by the friendship, but it seemed to have been good for both of them.

Then Tina slipped down to talk to Newt. When Theseus went to call them to dinner, she found them sitting side by side, Newt’s arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist. They hadn’t looked quite so peaceful for days. 

They would all be alright, he decided there and then. Whatever else happened, they would all be alright. He wasn’t losing anyone else. 

………………………………………………………….. 

Perhaps loving people who may betray you later isn’t worth it. Perhaps that’s the moral of the story. 

But perhaps, just perhaps, the point of the story is not that you were betrayed. 

Perhaps the point is that you loved.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think!


End file.
